They Cry in Silence Mar/Apr 2012
When this column first appeared in our May/June 2001 issue, it was intended to inform our readers about persecution of the brethren in faraway places. Living in the West tends to isolate believers from the body of Christ’s terrible suffering elsewhere, particularly in Muslim-majority countries where Christians are being ruthlessly murdered for their faith in Christ.
This column is a little different. This incident occurred in St. Louis, Missouri, and should convince even the most naïve that Sharia law and religious freedom cannot coexist.
Author and poet Alaa Alsaegh, an Iraqi immigrant and convert to Christianity from Islam, was driving in heavy traffic in broad daylight in St. Louis when another car suddenly cut him off. A second car stopped behind him, trapping him. Three Muslims emerged, entered Alsaegh’s vehicle, shoved him against the steering wheel, and stabbed him. Then they carved a huge Star of David into his back, all the while laughing at him and reciting his pro-Jewish poem, “Cries From the Heart of the Holocaust.”
The Arabic poem, posted on Nonie Darwish’s website ArabsForIsrael.com, “expressed its Arab author’s love for the Jewish people and his mourning over what happened to them in the Holocaust,” Ms. Darwish wrote in FrontPageMag.com.1 Because of his love for Israel, Mr. Alsaegh received death threats in Missouri and was branded a traitor and infidel.
The FBI considers the incident a hate crime. But to date we have seen nothing indicating the attackers were apprehended. Even in the United States, Islam tolerates nothing but devotion to Islam.
Raymond Ibrahim, with the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Middle East Forum, reported,
MEMRI*, for instance, recently published a report titled “The Sheikh of Al Azhar in an Exceptionally Tolerant Article: Christianity, Judaism Share Basic Tenets of Islam.” Of course, the day after this report appeared, this same sheikh—Islam’s most authoritative figure—insisted that the American ambassador wear a hijab when meeting him: just as Muslim “radicals” compel Christian girls to wear the hijab, “moderate” Al Azhar compels U.S. diplomats.2
Wrote Ibrahim, “The persecution of Christians in the Islamic world is on its way to reaching epidemic proportions.”3 In Egypt, “A Christian student was strangled and beaten to death by his Muslim teacher and fellow students for refusing to cover his cross. When the headmaster was informed of the attack in progress, he ignored it and ‘continued to sip his tea.’”4
In Somalia, a 17-year-old was decapitated for converting to Christianity the previous week. And in Pakistan, “A Christian mother of four was slaughtered by a Muslim colleague in Pakistan after she resisted his attempt to rape her at the factory where they worked.”5
Such is the world of Islam. Wrote Ms. Darwish, “Crimes done by Muslims against other Muslims who are considered apostates should alert the American public of what is coming to American streets if Muslims start increasing in numbers. The dirty little secret of Islamic hate and intolerance is clear,…and no one in the media cares to expose it and alert the American public.”6
*MEMRI is the Middle East Media Research Institute, memri.org.
ENDNOTES
- Nonie Darwish, “Sharia Vigilante Street Justice in America,” September 27, 2011 <frontpagemag.com/ 2011/09/27/sharia-vigilante-street-justice-in-america>.
- Raymond Ibrahim, “Top Muslim Declares All Christians ‘Infidels,” Pajamas Media, October 28, 2011 <meforum. org/3085/muslim-declares-christians-infidels>.
- Raymond Ibrahim, “Muslim Persecution of Christians, October 2011,” November 17, 2011 <meforum.org/3112/muslim-persecution-of-christians-october-2011>.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Darwish.
